April 25, 2011

Austin’s Only Festival is Coming Memorial Day Weekend, May 26th – 29th
Festival Showcases Austin’s Exploding Sketch Comedy Scene Incredible National Acts
The second annual Austin Sketch Comedy Festival is happening May 27th – 29th over Memorial Day weekend and will showcase Austin’s exploding sketch comedy scene and the very best scripted comedy America has to offer.

The festival will take place at ColdTowne Theater (4803-B Airport Blvd) and at the Spider House Ballroom (2908 Fruth St.). Tickets for all shows are available through coldtownetheater.com.

About ColdTowne Theater:

The ColdTowne Theater is Austin’s main stage for alternative comedy, with improv, sketch and stand up shows Thursday through Monday, featuring the smartest, brightest, and hardest-working comedians in Central Texas. ColdTowne’s resident comedians are three time winners of the Austin Chronicle’s “Best of Austin” Readers Poll for “Best Comedy Group” and have appeared all over country at festivals, on college campuses and at house parties.

ColdTowne Theater is home to the ColdTowne Conservatory which offers six levels of improv classes and three levels of sketch classes. ColdTowne has hosted improv and sketch workshops by nationally renowned performers and writers, such as the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and former SNL writer and People’s Improv Theater owner Ali Farahnakian.

SCHEDULEThursday, May 26th
@ Coldtowne Theater located at 4803-B Airport Blvd. next to I Luv Video

The P! Company (Austin, TX) — The P! Company is a sketch comedy group with a distinct blend of absurd, smart, and downright strange sketch comedy. Featuring material about sci-fi, UFOs, comic books, video games, and other alt fare, there’s something for everyone. Their performances showcase a mixture of high energy live sketches, strong stellar video sketches/segments, and wildly witty banter between its hosts Andy Petruzzo and Kyle Sweeney. After 5 years of performing locally, The P! Company has distinguished itself as one of the must-see alternative comedy sketch acts in Austin, TX.

10PM-11PMTurn of the Century Paris (Austin, TX) — Turn of the Century Paris is a sketch comedy troupe based in Austin, TX that defies both logic and gravity. Members Danny Catlow, Matt Derman, Steve Donovan, Chaz Formichella, and Ed Reed will not stop until they control the world. Recently voted “Outstanding Sketch Show” at ColdTowne Theater and “Highly Recommended” by the Austin Chronicle, Turn of the Century Paris brings their unique brand of nonsensical mischief to Austin Sketch Fest for the second year in a row.

11PMNight Show w/ Josh Krilov (Austin, TX) — The Night Show is ColdTowne Theater’s runaway hit late night talk show, playing to sold out crowds for the last 6 months. With monologues, videos, guests, behind the scenes antics and comedy, host Joshua Krilov, wacky sidekick Andy Petruzzo and quirky musical director Jason Laney create an engaging and genuinely different live comedy experience. Guests TBA.

Friday, May 27th
@ The Spider House Ballroom (2908 Fruth St.)

8PM – 10PMColdTowne Mainstage presents Cereal For Adults (Austin, TX) – ColdTowne Theater’s Main Stage cast returns for their fourth full-length comedy revue, Cereal For Adults – a mix of social and political satire, music and straight up nihilistic comedy. Four out of five cast members agree, Cereal for adults is the single most important thing to happen in Austin ever. Cereal For Adults features a cast of writers/performers made up of multiple Best of Austin and B. Iden Payne Award winners and sketch comedy veterans. The revue is helmed by veteran performer and ColdTowne Theater founder Michael Jastroch.

BLEAK! Comedy (Brooklyn, NY) – BLEAK! does a variety of sketches based on everything from break ups to Armageddon. Their sketches are cinematic; balancing sharp dialogue with exciting visuals like physicality, dance moves, and a giant stack of pancakes.

BLEAK! comedy has been performing since 2007 at venues in New York City such as 92Y Tribeca, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, Under St. Mark’s Theatre, The Kraine Theatre, The Gene Frankel Theatre, The School of Visual Arts, New York University, the Monkey Bar Lounge and outside of New York at Boston University. BLEAK! has headlined at the National College Comedy Festival at Skidmore College and Slate, the World College Comedy Festival at George Washington University. In addition to performances at these festivals BLEAK! has also taught workshops to participating college sketch troupes. BLEAK! has been hosting a monthly variety show at the Creek and Cave in Long Island City since early 2009 and is the record holding eight win champion of the monthly Backyard Brawl at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. BLEAK!’s sketch videos have also been featured on collegehumor.com, theapiary.com and blackberrycool.com.

10PM – 12AMStag Comedy (Austin, TX) – Featuring members of Master Pancake Theater, Mascot Wedding Productions, Hot Property and The Andrew and Matt show; Stag Comedy presents a seamless mix of live and video sketches that are sure to bring a smile to your face and frowns to the faces of your many, many enemies. Created by Joe Parsons, the current cast consists of Joe, Mac Blake, David Jara, Ximena Estrada, Dave Youmans, and Andrew Rosas.

Audience of Two (Brooklyn, NY) – Audience of Two was co-founded in 2001 by Sam Dingman and Gerrit Hall. Its first incarnation was a late-night radio show on WSRN 91.5 FM, the college radio station of Swarthmore College. Following graduation from Swarthmore, Audience of Two found themselves with the continued desire to create comedic mayhem, but without the benefit of a minimally-supervised, fully functional radio station. They shifted the format of Audience of Two to a hand-bound print magazine, published monthly and circulated on the streets of Charleston, WV, Philadelphia, PA, and New York City. However, as is well known, Kinko’s is a foul and evil place, plus Gerrit is a whiz with the internets, so they soon moved from print to websclusive, where their content has been featured on such sites as Fark.com, FHM, Slate, Raising Kaine, and the print edition of the Chicago Sun-Times. Audience of Two’s primary focus is currently live performance.

Saturday, May 28th
@ The Spider House Ballroom (2908 Fruth Street)

8PM – 10PMMidnight Society Presents (Austin, TX) — Made up of stand up and sketch comedians, filmmakers, and writers, Midnight Society was named Austin’s best improv troupe by the Austin American Satesman’s A-List and was recently nominated for a B. Iden Payne Award. They’ve performed all around the country, including one show where star of stage and screen Matthew Lillard was in the audience. Midnight Society performs every Saturday night at 10PM at ColdTowne Theater along with improv veterans The Frank Mills.

Saddle Dads (Chicago, IL) — The Saddle Dads are a Chicago-based premiere skit comedy group. Akin to the old-timey Marx Brothers, albeit less related, the Saddle Dads get into a bunch of messy adventures that are inevitably solved through the power of sketch comedy. The Saddle Dads exist in a world of dumb characters, big problems and incredible amounts of doofery. It’s fun, we swear!

The Saddle Dads can be seen individually on stages at iO, the Second City and the Annoyance in Chicago and were recently featured in the 2011 Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival. You can find out more about all of your favorite Dads at www.saddledads.com.

10PM – 12AMYour Terrific Neighbors (Austin, TX) — Your Terrific Neighbors are friends that write down the strange things that give them joy and amusement and then they perform the strange things in spaces where people are allowed to come and watch them.

They perform on the first Sunday of every month at the Hideout Theatre in downtown Austin. They are the winners of Coldtowne Theater’s 2010 24-Hour Sketch Brawl. They are also the winners of your hearts. You just don’t know it yet.

Sunday, May 29th
@ Coldtowne Theater located at 4803-B Airport Blvd. next to I Luv Video

7-8 PMBest-Of-the-Festival Show

8:30 PMRattlesnake (Austin, TX) — Rattlesnake, composed of Kate Bojanek, Emma Holder and Katie Sicking brings you the weirdest and most unexpected sketch show you’ve ever seen. With scenes about alien warfare, geometric sex, harry potter as a has-been, and a video sketch that literally banned us all from Fiesta Mart, even you’re stuck up cat will enjoy it. Remember when the internet first came out? It was exciting, right? They’re the internet of sketch comedy!

Broadminded (Milwaukee, WI) — Broadminded is Milwaukee’s premier (and only) all-female
sketch comedy group. The broads (Stacy Babl, Anne Graff LaDisa, Melissa Kingston and Megan McGee) have trained at ComedySportz Milwaukee and Chicago’s Second City Conservatory. In 2006 they combined their powers and started writing and performing sketches “By Women. For Everyone.” Their shows are described as “both intelligent satire and straightforward comedy” (Russ Bickerstaff, ExpressMilwaukee). Broadminded, which recently turned five, enjoys finger painting, dancing, and playing dress up; when it grows up, it would like to be a tiger.